Map of the day: Residential Water Use Per Capita, 2005

The Metropolitan Council is now accepting comments on their Master Water Supply Plan. Above is a map you’ll be hard pressed to find in the document, but comes from data published at Data Finder. Numbers in parentheses are residential gallons per capita, per day. 2005 is the most recent year for which they say they have complete data from municipal systems.

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About Brendon Slotterback

Brendon is a professional planner and Sustainability Program Coordinator for the City of Minneapolis. He has a degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota. When not at home in southwest Minneapolis, he may be catching trout or riding a bicycle. You can find his blog at netdensity.net and you can follow him on twitter. His views are his alone, and do not reflect those of his employer.

8 Responses to Map of the day: Residential Water Use Per Capita, 2005

Do you know how so many cities ended up under St. Paul’s water supply? It extends to over 10 other cities, as far as 8 miles from the actual borders of St. Paul. But it seems to work remarkably efficiently.

Other cities are under Minneapolis’s water supply, too. I think they’re open to selling to anyone it’s practical to sell to — I think the rate is favorable to the city providing the water.

The practice is much more environmentally responsible than pumping groundwater (which is what pretty much everyone else in the metro does). Unfortunately, local pride and a desire to keep water cheap (for now) seems to prevent others from going on the larger systems.

On Minnetrista, maybe a combo of both. Growing up in Lakeville, I lived in an area that was built back in the 50s/60s. While we were on a lake, there are plenty of pocket neighborhoods or solo houses from that time period that pre-dated the newer subdivisions built in the late 70s and on, and most (if not all) of the older homes had private wells. Even when our street was paved and city utilities came in (1991) we were able to keep our well for our outdoor spigots, as long as the plumbing was completely separate from the rest of the house. I don’t know if the practice is still allowed, but I would bet it’s a contributing factor.

When was this? Who is the “expert” and what are her/his credentials? Water treatment class at the U had a professor who nearly fawned over the St Paul system’s use of activated carbon.

The Saint Paul system has one big “drawback” which is that instead of using several tanks for initial filtration and sedimentation from the Mississippi it is pumped through several lakes in the northern reach of their service area, allowing more to precipitate out naturally, dilute itself, and otherwise make it easier for the plant. This makes the system more efficient, but also means that in the spring algae blooms can make the water smell funny, but are entirely non-toxic (and has since been eliminated with the active carbon process).

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